You read my Sardinian Meatball story and I promised Roasted Cherokee Purple Tomato Sauce. Today I deliver, even though Cherokee Purple Tomatoes are not yet in season; you’ll be ready when they come. Actually, the recipe is for “Heirloom Tomatoes,” and these pictures show a mixed variety of heirlooms, but the Cherokee Purple, by themselves, are my favorite.

In July of 2009, Georgeanne Brennan, in a Special to The Chronicle, wrote an excellent story on various tomatoes and sauces that included Roasted Heirloom Tomato Sauce. She grows her own tomatoes, so she has plenty to deal with and experiment with. Like me, she likes making her own sauce:

“I like being able to use my own ready-made sauce. I don’t even thaw it. I just put the frozen block in a pan, along with about a quarter cup of water, cover the pan and simmer until the block has melted. Then I remove the cover, turn up the heat and cook until the sauce is the consistency I want, usually thick enough for me to trace a clean path across the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, with no sauce rushing to cover the path.

Ideally, my husband and I make and freeze enough tomato sauce to supply ourselves from late October through June, those months when tomatoes are out of season. We start making our sauce in mid-August, when the tomatoes are ripening in the full summer heat, and continue until the first freeze arrives and our tomato vines blacken and shrivel.”

But she grows her own tomatoes and was educated in France. I’m just a city-boy, buying my tomatoes at the Farmers Market or direct from farmers and picking up recipes and techniques as I go along. I’ve used the “bag and freeze” method she describes. I also like to store 3-cups of my sauce in Quart containers with lids that stack nicely in the freezer. They’re easy to open and pop into a pan for thawing. Last year, I tried canning, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Continue reading →